World’s largest bee, once presumed extinct, filmed alive in the wild

Wallace’s giant bee disappeared for more than a century. Now it’s back, and already being sold online by at least one collector.

Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto) has a wingspan of 2.5 inches and large jaws, almost like those of a stag beetle, which it uses to scoop up tree resin to line its nests.

Photograph by Clay Bolt

The world’s largest bee may also be the planet’s most elusive. First discovered
in 1859 by the prominent scientist Alfred Russel Wallace, nobody could
locate it again, and it was presumed extinct.

But Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto) was not gone. In 1981,
an entomologist named Adam Messer searched and found it on three islands
in Indonesia, on an archipelago called the North Moluccas. He collected
a specimen and wrote about his discovery in 1984.

Now, for the first time, it has been photographed and filmed alive in
the wild, by a team including nature photographer Clay Bolt. Meanwhile,
in the last year, two specimens of the insect have been sold on eBay for
thousands of dollars, raising fears about its continued survival.

Wallace Giant Bee Ambient

The bee, which grows up to an inch and a half long with a wingspan of
2.5 inches, has large mandibles that almost look like those of a stag beetle.
It uses them to scrape sticky resin off trees to build burrows within termite
nests, where females raise their young. Like other bees, it feeds on nectar
and pollen.

Messer wrote in 1984 that it remains rare in its range, and as this solitary
bee lives only in aerial termite mounds, isn’t exactly easy to find. It
was collected in 1991 by a French researcher, though not filmed or photographed
at that time.

Bolt and trip member Eli Wyman, a biologist at Princeton, were overjoyed
to find the bee on an expedition in January. One of the most notable things
about the bee, a female, was the sound of her wings: a “deep, slow thrum
that you could almost feel as well as hear,” Bolt says.

Wyman says he could feel the displacement of air as she flew by. “Such
an incredible, tangible experience from an animal that had only lived in
my imagination for years,” he adds.

Many have become intrigued by the insect, including Nicolas Vereecken,
an entomologist and ecologist at the University of Brussels. He studies
bee diversity and was naturally interested to see the world’s largest.
Over a decade ago, he sought out a specimen collected by Wallace himself,
housed at Oxford Natural History Museum.

The original specimen of Wallace's giant bee, collected by Alfred Russel Wallace.

Photograph by Robert Clark, Nat Geo Image Collection

That only made him want to learn more. Early last year, at Naturalis Biodiversity
Center in the Netherlands, he stumbled across a specimen collected in 1991
by a French researcher named Roch Desmier de Chenon. (The man was thought
to be dead by many in France, but Vereecken found to his surprise and joy
that de Chenon is alive, and living in Melbourne, Australia.)

The very same day, Vereecken discovered that a collector was selling a
specimen of Megachile pluto online, on eBay—it
eventually sold for $9,100. Later in 2018, the same collector sold another
for a couple thousand dollars. The bee, it seemed, was very much still
around.

Vereecken is alarmed that this insect has been sold online—and it’s possible
that more commerce is taking place through less visible channels. He described
these sales in a study published in December in
the Journal of Insect Conservation.

It’s currently legal for this species to be sold across borders, as the
animal is not protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species, which governs international trade in threatened species. Wallace’s
giant bee is currently only considered “vulnerable” by the International
Union for Conservation of Nature, which sets the conservation statuses
of animals around the world. Vereecken and others think it should be classified
as endangered, at the very least, considering how rare it is and that its
range is almost certainly smaller than originally thought. Vereecken is
pushing to change its status, though doing so will require more study.

close

This male Andrena perplexa was caught in Maryland on May 16.

Photograph by Sam Droege, USGS

close

This tricolored bumblebee (Bombus ternarius) is from the Adirondacks in New York State.

Photograph by Sam Droege, USGS

close

A rare specimen indeed, Triepeolus monardae hadn't been seen for 20 years until a researcher found one in a Georgia longleaf pine plantation two years ago.

Photograph by Sam Droege, USGS

close

This may look like a bee—it had even Droege fooled when he caught it in Maryland—but it's actually a fly (Microdon) masquerading as a bee.

Photograph by Sam Droege, USGS

close

This "super tiny bee" is a male Ceratina tricolor and it's about half the size of a grain of rice.

Photograph by Sam Droege, USGS

close

This girl is far from home. A Pachyanthidium, this bee is native to Africa.

Photograph by Sam Droege, USGS

close

This species, Colletes hederae is native to England and is a specialist on ivy.

Bolt traveled to Indonesia with Wyman, Australian biologist Simon Robson,
and writer Glen Chilton in January. After five days of fruitlessly searching
termite mounds in trees during the rainy season, the team had begun to
feel a bit discouraged. They were about to call it a day, Bolt says, when
they searched one last nest—which had a resiny hole within.

After several members of the party climbed up to take a took, it became
clear there was a bee in the hole. They put a collection tube at the exit,
and a full-sized female Wallace’s giant bee crawled out.

“We yelled and screamed and hugged each other,” Robson says. After photographing
and filming it, they let it go and it returned to the nest. Unlike some
of its relatives, the bee seemed “very relaxed” and non-aggressive, Bolt
adds.

Roch Desmier de Chenon, who is now 80, was working for the Indonesian
Oil Palm Research Institute in 1991 when he decided to search for Wallace's
giant bee on the island of Halmahera. Locals, some of whom were familiar
with the bee, guided him to a particular tree where the insects collect
sap. He says over the course of his research he saw about 20 to 30 of the
giants, though he only collected one.

"I was very happy to find it because I knew it was a big discovery,"
de Chenon says, but he didn't publish his work, in part because he feared
that collectors would use the information for nefarious purposes. He now
regrets not publishing his finding.

Indeed, on the one hand, publicizing the discovery of the insect could
seem like a risk, considering that it has been sold online, says Robin
Moore, with Global Wildlife Conservation, which helped organize the trip.
But in reality, unscrupulous collectors already know that it exists.

Thus, promoting its discovery and specialness could help the local government
and various stakeholders get behind its protection.

“If we don’t do anything, it [may] just be collected and slip into obscurity,”
Bolt says.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 6:35 p.m., Feb. 21, with input from Roch Desmier de Chenon.

PUBLISHED February 21, 2019

close

You are going to nationalgeographic.com/tv and different terms of use
and privacy policy will apply.